Welcome to my personal blog on Robin Hood Marketing—the concept of stealing corporate savvy to sell just causes—and my life as a marketer, from Washington DC to Madagascar to points in between.
And today I have big news - here at Network for Good, we asked author Dan Heath to donate his time to talk about the book and how nonprofits can be stickier. And being the generous person he is, he agreed. Don’t miss the incredible opportunity to hear from one of the greatest marketing minds around - for free!
It’s hard to make an impact with your ideas. It’s hard to get people to pay attention, to listen. And even if they listen, how can you get them to care?
It’s a tough problem, but Dan Heath has some answers. Dan is the co-author of the book Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die. The book has been on the BusinessWeek bestseller list for 13 months and running, and it was named one of the Best Business Books of the year by both Amazon readers and editors.
Join us on March 11 for a teleseminar that will transform the way you communicate. You’ll learn how to make your messages more memorable, using lessons from psychological research. You’ll learn about the common structure that underlies successful nonprofit campaigns, such as “Don’t Mess With Texas” and The Truth (anti-smoking) campaign.
Dial in at 1 p.m. eastern on March 11. You’ll never communicate the same way again.
As I write, here at Network for Good, I’m listening to a great Nonprofit 911 call. No worries if you aren’t listening too - you can view the summary here. And I’m sharing here the summary by our guest speaker Kivi Leroux Miller of NonprofitMarketingGuide.com. I know Kivi personally and think she has terrific advice, which you can check out on her site. I’d also like to unabashedly advertise her work—she does a lot of wonderful webinars and e-trainings which are well worth the modest investment.
Ten tips by Kivi:
1. Know your audience, ask what they want, and deliver it.
Even though your newsletter readers may be incredibly generous individuals, it’s helpful to think of them as very self-centered, selfish people when they are reading your email newsletter. Here’s why: if the content isn’t immediately relevant and valuable to them as individual human beings, they’ll delete it in an instant. We know what’s in it for you, but what’s in it for them?
As you write your newsletter articles, keep asking yourself these questions: How will this article make our readers feel? How will it make their lives easier or better? Does this article show our readers how important they are to us?
2. Send frequently - if you have good content.
How often should you send your email newsletter? In general, I recommend no more than once a week and no less than every six weeks. You want people to remember you and look forward to receiving your newsletter, but you don’t want to drive them crazy either. Your email schedule should be determined by how often you have great content to send.
If you are providing on-target, valuable information each and every time (or darn close), your readers won’t feel bugged by frequent mailings. If you don’t have enough content for a newsletter every two months, you either don’t know your readers or aren’t thinking creatively about ways to talk about your work. See 15 Places to Find Article Ideas for Your Nonprofit Newsletter on my blog.
Here’s a sweeping generalization: most nonprofits send e-newsletters too infrequently. If you aren’t sure whether to step up your publishing schedule or not, I’d say go for it. If your unsubscribe rate goes up, ask why people are leaving your list and if frequency is the problem, back off.
3. Make it personal.
People give to and support nonprofits for highly subjective reasons. Your supporters get something deeply personal out of their affiliation with your organization as a donor, volunteer, or advocate. So why would your response back to these passionate people be institutional, monolithic, and completely objective?
Break out of the “The 501(c)(3) speaks to the masses” mode and make it more personal. I’m not suggesting that you turn your newsletter into a vehicle for personal rambling or try to elevate your executive director to cult status. But you should consider ways to make your newsletter sound as though it is written by one staff person speaking directly to one supporter. Do articles talk about the staff, donors, or volunteers involved in the work? Do the articles have bylines? Are the articles written in a conversational style, even if they aren’t bylined? Have you included some headshots or other people photos? If someone hits “reply” to the newsletter, will a real person see it and respond, or will the reader get an auto-reply about that email address not being checked?
4. Make the next step as easy as possible.
Once your supporters read your newsletter, what’s next? Do you have a call to action? Do you want them donate, volunteer, register, tell a friend, learn more, write a email, make a call or what? Include specific calls to action and links that make following through as simple as possible. Make it, as Katya Andresen says, a “filmable moment.” Could you film your supporters following through on your call to action? If it is clear and simple enough, your supporters should be able to easily visualize themselves and others doing it.
5. Put an unmistakable name in the “From” field.
For most nonprofits, this will be your organization’s name or a well-known campaign or initiative. Don’t use a staff person’s name unless at least 80% of the people on your mailing list will recognize it. If you decide to use a person’s name (it is more personal after all - see #3 above), I recommend including your acronym or other identifier after the name. This should not change from issue to issue; you want to build up reader recognition.
6. Use a specific, benefit-laden “Subject” line.
The busier your supporters are, the more likely they are to look at your email subject line and nothing else before deciding whether to read it or delete it. Pack your subject lines with details about what’s inside, emphasizing the benefits to the reader of taking a few extra seconds to see what’s in the body of the message. That’s a tall order for 50-60 characters, which is the rule of thumb for subject line length. Do your best and track which newsletters have the best open rates to see which subject lines seem to appeal most to your readers.
Your subject line should change with every edition. Don’t waste space with dates, edition numbers, sender info, etc. The only exception would be if you have a very short, memorable, and meaningful newsletter title. You can put the title first, often in brackets like this: [E-News Title] Subject Line Specific to This Email’s Content. See Best Practices in Writing Email Subject Lines (MailChimp).
7. Design a simple, clean newsletter that’s mostly text.
People expect to read email, which means they are looking for words. They don’t expect the same visual stimulation that they do when they visit a web page. It’s much more important to say something timely, interesting, or valuable than it is to produce a newsletter that’s visually stunning. At the same time, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t use a stylish design and photos. Just make sure that the text gets top billing and wraps cleanly around any graphic elements, especially since those items will appear as big red Xs to a big chunk of your readers. And don’t worry about needing serious design or HTML skills to produce an email newsletter. All of the major email newsletter service providers offer many templates to pick from.
8. Write and design for the preview pane.
Most people don’t actually open each email message. Instead, they use the preview pane to view them. That means you’ve got a fairly small space in which to impress your reader enough to make them either scroll through your email or open it fully.
Images near the top of your newsletter can hog that important space or waste it entirely if images are turned off in the email program. For example, if you want to use an image as your newsletter header, keep it “short” - say under 100 pixels high - so that it doesn’t fill up the whole preview pane. Be sure that you have plenty of compelling text near the top of the newsletter so that even if images are turned off, the reader still sees some interesting text. Also be sure to include ALT tags with all images. See Images in Email and Email Newsletters: Dos and Don’ts and Writing Great ALT Tags for Your E-Newsletters on my blog.
Never send an all-image email newsletter. You’ve seen those emails where the entire preview pane is filled with a big red-X box. They are trying to send you a pretty email by including all the text in a graphic. The problem is that many email programs don’t show images by default. Therefore, you see nothing but the box. I automatically delete emails like this.
9. Appeal to skimmers: Use lots of headlines, subheadings, and short chunks of text.
People scan and skim email before they read it. Short paragraphs and sentences are easier to skim. Descriptive headlines and subheads with active verbs and vivid nouns will grab your supporters’ attention and nudge them into actually reading the text. See Copyblogger’s How to Write Magnetic Headlines series for tons of examples. I also teach a webinar several times a year on online writing dos and don’ts, focusing specifically on how to make your online writing skimmable. Check the webinar schedule.
10. Use an email newsletter service.
If you have more than 20 people on your mailing list and you want that list to grow, you need to use an email newsletter service provider or ESP. Many online client database/fundraising service providers include email marketing in their packages. You can also use companies that specialize in email marketing, like EmailNow. These providers can automate many functions that you shouldn’t be wasting time on, including managing subscribes, unsubscribes, and bounces. They also help you comply with the CAN-SPAM law; strongly encourage you to use best-practice, double opt-in procedures; give you the code for an email newsletter sign-up box for your website; and offer great tracking tools that are nearly impossible for you to implement on your own. The cost of using an email newsletter service is minimal and the benefits are huge.
While these tips are solid advice that will work in most cases, what’s most important is what works for you and your supporters. Test what you do and make adjustments accordingly.
I read an interesting story in the Washington Post today. Apparently marketing staff from Disney are training Walter Reed staff in customer service. The hospital serving wounded soldiers has made headlines for its poor conditions and crippling bureaucracy.
The Mouseketeer Marketers apparently say it’s all about the audience. No magic there - just smart marketing. Customer service makes all the difference - just ask Snow White.
[Kris Lafferty, a trainer for the Disney Institute], who was a Navy lawyer before she started a second career with Disney, led the audience in a discussion of similarities between Disney and the Army hospital. (Both are dedicated to “making people feel better”; both are “subject to media scrutiny”; both are named after famous people named Walter. )
The Walter Reed employees learned the Disney lexicon. Employees are called “cast members.” Customers—or patients—are “guests.”
Then it was on to what Lafferty called the “Disney difference”: “You have to know and understand your guests.”
Much of it involves paying attention to details that matter to patients and visitors, Lafferty noted. “If I go to the doctor’s office and all the plants are dead, I don’t have a good feeling,” she said.
A wheelchair with frayed padding on the arm rests leaves a lasting impression, Donnelly said.
As a contrast to the irate Donald Duck, the trainers showed a slide of a beatific Snow White, holding a broom in a spic-and-span room and surrounded by happy animals. (Lesson: “You can’t sweep it under the rug,” Lafferty said.)
During breaks, some Walter Reed employees expressed surprise at the relevance of the training to their jobs.
“This is good,” said Jan Yatsko, head nurse for vascular surgery at the hospital. “It’s not what we expected.”
I think it’s sound advice - at a price. Apparently the Disney training is around $800,000. So let me save you some money: Listen to Snow White. Your customer service really, really matters. It’s true in the Magic Kingdom, it’s true for the famlies of wounded soldiers, and it’s true for charities.
The main reason donors quit supporting a charity is HOW THEY WERE TREATED BY THAT CHARITY. How people experience you when they give, when they call you and when they benefit from your programs is everything. Give to your own charity and see what happens. If you provide human services, use them as a visitor. This may be depressing. I have yet to work for any organization that is consistently fantastic at customer service - and it’s especially hard for small, underfunded organizations. But we can’t afford not to try better.
A couple of months ago, Erick Brownstein of Ideablob.com wrote me with an interesting question: Are the challenges of how to start, run and develop small nonprofits different than those of the small business owner?
He thinks not. Here’s what he said:
Just as the vast majority of small businesses in the US are really ‘micro’ businesses with less than five employees, nearly 80% of the approximately 1.5 million US nonprofits have less than $100k in assets and/or revenues. Oftentimes, it’s one person running the show and these individuals are seeking support for issues ranging from health insurance to marketing to technology. Regarding what’s necessary for success, there are far more similarities than differences between the small nonprofit and the small business.
Advanta Bank recently launched Ideablob.com, an online community where people from diverse industries with different interests can help each other grow and develop their ideas...with a $10,000 monthly prize for the idea that the community votes as the best.
Originally conceived as a place for small business owners and entrepreneurs, the site has been attracting significant participation from small nonprofits. But what’s in it for them? Vying for the monthly prize offers a fun and engaging way to get feedback from supporters as well as other ideablob community members. In addition to the chance to win the money, these finalists (with Advanta’s support) have generated significant publicity for themselves. Several of the finalists have been nonprofits and last month’s second $10k ‘best idea’ winner was Marci Bossow Schankweiler, president and founder of Crossing the Finish Line (CFL), a PA-based small nonprofit that provides excursions for young adult cancer patients and their families.
“If a company can do something that is good for its customers, that in turn is good for the company.” For Advanta, this is an experiment in the new landscape of social media where clearly defined business models aren’t yet established. For those who run small nonprofits and small businesses, Ideablob is an experiment in exploring the value of openly sharing new ideas with a wide range of people and their varied perspectives and an interesting tool for promotion and engagement.
I think this is quite wise marketing on the part of Advanta, and I’m intrigued by what Erick says. When I was writing Robin Hood Marketing, I often turned for inspiration to marketing writers who catered to small businesses. Like Duct Tape Marketing. I think Erick is right that we—small business and nonprofits—have a lot to learn from each other. Here’s some evidence: someone posting an idea and the responses they got.
And apparently nonprofits have some good ideas: 7 of 8 of this month’s finalists are nonprofits. Try it out.
My beloved writer cousin Elisabeth just sent me this email yesterday, which I’m reprinting with her permission:
I just totally thought of you—I had a “marketing moment” looking through this catalog from “Fair Indigo.” Have you ever heard of it? I hadn’t. It’s “fair trade clothes” which sort of look like Ann Taylor Loft with maybe a sprinkle of J. Jill. Lots of t-shirts and stuff, “made fairly in Buji, China,” etc.. But as I was going through, I started dog-earing pages and making these grand plans to overhaul my wardrobe, and I suddenly realized I was going to buy a ton of stuff not because I really like the clothes (they’re ok) but because I want to buy tons of new clothes while congratulating myself on improving the lives of women in Buji, China. Almost every page has a story about how great these factories are, and what a difference they’re making. I was getting so into it when I realized, what a great marketing angle and application of K. Andresen’s marketing principles! Even the cover line is “Fair Trade Fashion helps change the world,” and here I am in the kitchen with Alistair thinking, I’m a world-changer! Let’s get that sweater in latte, too!
I love this story because it shows that good stories - and especially stories about good - sell just about anything.
We buy so many things because of their storyline, and we are especially likely to spend when we aspire to be a character in that story. Imagine helping raise someone out of poverty on the other side of the world just by being fashionable - that’s being a heroine.
Remember this! Your storyline is essential. If you have a corporate partner, your cause-related marketing effort needs a compelling storyline. If you’re about to email an appeal - check if there is a story there. Is the reader going to feel a part of it? No? Then start rewriting now. You need a good protagonist, a high-stakes conflict or challenge, and a resolution with meaning. Even fashion catalogs have them.
You can check out Fair Indigo’s fine website here.
Since it’s a day when we’re focused on winning hearts, I’m going to take a moment to highlight in red what we all adore: being recognized and loved for who we are and connecting with those we love.
Treat those you want to reach in this world with that kind of affection. Listen to what they say. Acknowledge and appreciate who they are. They will respond in kind. Great marketing is about love.
I just started writing a monthly column for Fundraising Success Magazine. Check out the current issue here - it’s pretty interesting stuff. Be sure to read Jeff Brooks’ column on “protecting victims.”
Here’s mine:
Imagine you’re waiting at the bus stop on a busy street in your town. It’s a cold day, and you’ve got your hood up and your head down. You’re thinking about a lot of things. That you’re going to be late to work if the bus doesn’t soon appear. That you forgot to pick up your dry cleaning. That all that holiday overconsumption has made your pants too tight. That your spouse doesn’t look at you the same way anymore. That you forgot to feed your daughter’s guinea pig this morning.
Then I walk up and interrupt your thoughts. I’m a complete stranger, and I say: “Greetings. I’m Katya, and I’m a good person. I was born in 1967. My mission in life is to raise my children well, love those around me and leave the world a little better than when I entered it. I need a friend, and you could be my friend. Will you be my friend today?”
I imagine that you would think I was nuts. And quite the narcissist.
Yet we fundraisers launch into this kind of creepy plea all the time. I have a stack of year-end appeals from December on my desk, and too many sound just like my stranger at the bus stop. Here’s the template:
Holiday greetings.
I’m writing from XYZ Nonprofit.
Established in (year), our mission is to (mission statement).
We need money.
Give us money.
Thanks in advance.
PS: Give us money.
I think this is nuts. And narcissistic. And it sounds like the bus-stop broadside. Fundraisers can and should do better. We should beware the bus-stop broadside fundraiser in all of us.
Why? People are busy, and their thoughts are not on us. They’re thinking about their weight, their job, their spouse, their children, the guinea pig, their place in this universe. If we interrupt them and ask for their attention, we had better do it well. We should not start a conversation with a monologue on our merits. We should acknowledge our readers’ presence and speak to their interests. We should not solely focus on what we want from them. We should focus on what we can achieve together.
If this sounds like common sense, well then, you’re on to me. This column, a new one here at FundRaising Success, is going to focus on the common sense we always forget. It’s about forgotten fundamentals — those immutable laws of marketing that are so easy to recognize and so hard to remember to do. And the fundamental we forget most often is this: To succeed in fundraising, we need to focus on our audience and not just ourselves.
I can speak with great authority on this topic because I’m constantly forgetting this fundamental. I forget that not everyone wakes up first thing in the morning thinking about online giving, which is the focus of my work at Network for Good. It slips my mind that my cocktail party companions might not share my zeal for all things marketing. I have a recurring case of mission myopia. The only cure is self-awareness and regular booster shots of an anti-nonprofit-narcissism vaccine.
Last year, Network for Good processed its 100 millionth dollar for nonprofits; a huge milestone for us. I started to draft a press release, but sanity prevailed. “Who would care?” I thought. No one, I realized. So I thought about why people should care. And what I realized was we were sitting on a fascinating set of data about giving. What if we celebrated our $100 million mark by analyzing our $100 million in giving — who gives online, where, what time of day, etc. — and sending our study to media and nonprofits? It would help media covering the charity beat, and it would help nonprofits fundraise more effectively. The result? A lot of attention and coverage of our work that continues to this day.
I was reminded of that study a few weeks ago when I was drafting a year-end e-mail to Network for Good’s friends and funders. The occasion was our sixth birthday, and the purpose of the note was to talk about the great things we’d achieved the past year. Then I realized that our birthday wasn’t really an occasion at all. Who cares, besides the people in my office, that we’re 6? And why should we be beating our chests, taking all the credit for the good we’d done? I was doing the bus-stop broadside.
So I started over. I drafted a heartfelt thank-you to our friends and funders for all they’ve done to make us what we are. The e-mail talked about how much we appreciate their investment of money, time and moral support — and the incredible returns that have resulted. It celebrated the difference the audience had made, and people loved it.
Here’s the bad news. It’s hard to do this. Our tendency as fundraisers who love our cause is to talk about our cause.
Here’s the good news. When we do the work of thinking about how our cause relates to our audience, wonderful things happen. It’s worth the effort. We turn our preachy monologue into a respectful, engaging conversation. People respond because they want to have a relationship with us. We become great fundraisers, and we might even make a new best friend at the bus stop. FS
Katya’s note: This guest post is by my talented colleague Rebecca Ruby at Network for Good. I want to share it because I often get asked, how do I build an email list?
By Rebecca Ruby
A philosophical question: If an e-newsletter is powerful enough to move someone to action, but no one’s around to read it, does it make an impact?
If not particularly mind-bending, this inquiry does bring up a valuable (seemingly obvious) point: You can craft a fabulous e-newsletter, send it out just the right number of times per year and impart some really powerful information, but you need to create an email contact list (an audience) at your organization to be effective.
Here are four tips to get you started on the road to contact-information glory:
1. Make it easy, compelling and cool for your website visitors to give you their email addresses (yes, it can be cool). The majority of people visiting your organization’s website is there on purpose-they may have been searching for your organization in particular or simply shopping around for a nonprofit with your mission. Make the sign-up button easy-to-spot, put it “above the fold,” and make your form brief yet informative (you risk form abandonment if you require or ask for too many pieces of information).
2. Include “join our email list” everywhere you can. Once you have your online form, send people there from all directions: your homepage, the signature at the bottom of your email (your everyday contacts may opt in), and other places you have content sprinkled around the Internet such as blogs and social networking pages.
3. Use the “people love free stuff” principle. Incentivize. You’re asking people to give you something (information), and they’re going to wonder what’s in it for them:
•Set up a drawing.
•Offer prizes to the first X people who sign up for your new e-newsletter or who sign up by Y date.
•Show people that they’re making a difference and/or joining a community.
4. Make it easy for your current subscribers to hook their friends. Promote your newsletter and gain new subscribers by asking current subscribers to forward your message along; consider including a “forward to a friend” link in your message. Keep in mind that you should always include a subscribe link in your newsletter so people who do receive a forwarded copy have an easy way to get their own copy in the future.
Seth Godin has a superlative blog entry today. In the unlikely event you haven’t heard of Seth, he’s author of the classic Purple Cow, the new Meatball Sundae and one of my favorite writers on marketing. He says:
People take action (mostly) based on one of three emotions:
Fear
Hope
Love
Every successful marketer (including politicians) takes advantage of at least one of these basic needs.
Forbes Magazine, for example, is for people who hope to make more money.
Rudy Giuliani was the fear candidate. He tried to turn fear into love, but failed.
Few products or services succeed out of love. People are too selfish for an emotion that selfless, most of the time.
It’s interesting to think about the way certain categories gravitate to various emotions. Doctors selling check ups, of course, are in the fear business (while oncologists certainly sell hope). Restaurants have had a hard time selling fear (healthy places don’t do so well). Singles bars certainly thrive on selling hope.
Google, amazingly quickly, became a beloved brand, something many people see as bigger than themselves, something bigger than hope. Apple lives in this arena as well. I think if you deliver hope for a long time (and deliver on it sometimes) you can graduate to love.
Very interesting.
I think fear is not a great motivator for good causes, unless you can also pair fear with a way to resolve the situation that is terrifying. This is why health scares often work to get people to change their health behaviors. Too much fear and negativity will make people feel helpless or perceive that your issue is intractable. Fear often prompts a person to cower or take cover. Give people the feeling that they have the power to help or change a situation.
By contrast, hope can make you commit. Hope is a big winner for us. Everyone wants to feel hope, and we are all about hope in our field. I hope you are making hope a big part of the way you talk about your programs.
Love is possible for us. If Google - a search engine - evokes that kind of emotion, we damn well can too. IF we do a good job fulfilling our mission. IF we do a great job telling our story. IF we do a better job reporting back to donors what they’ve done for others. IF we build lasting, two-way relationships with the people who support us. Do people love your organization? They will if you do these things. I hope you do!
Not a whole lot. But it’s amusing. This is my cousin Justin’s band’s video. Give me an excuse for having displayed it! I pledge a free copy of Robin Hood Marketing to the first person who can connect this video to the topic of nonprofit marketing. No astroturfing from pickle or hotdog companies, please.
UPDATE: Wow, well done, readers! You were SO inspired that I’m awarding two books—one for the first entry below by Cindi AND everyone else who replies by midnight tonight gets entered into a lottery for an additional book. I’ll announce the winner tomorrow.
I was having lunch with some of my favorite web designers the other day, and we got to talking about the scarcity mentality. They were especially irritated with unethical web designers that create websites that nonprofits can’t access themselves, so they could generate more business for their firms in perpetuity. They told the story of one nonprofit that hired them saying their last designer wouldn’t even give them high-resolution electronic files of the logo they’d designed—so the firm could charge the nonprofit each time it needed to do something with their logo. It had never occurred to that nonprofit to beware of that in their contract. While this made the firm money in the short term, the nonprofit was so irate they hired a new designer (my friends) and doubtlessly spread lots of bad word of mouth about that awful firm.
Hoarding, secrecy and a spirit of scarcity are not good strategies.
Then I saw this excellent point made by blogger Terri:
The non-profit universe is set up so that everyone must compete for the same money. This prevents a lot of networking, partnering and coalition-building. I think this is a shame. Just as it is possible for me to invite you over for dinner without giving you my house, it must be possible for agencies and others to connect and interact in ways that increase the visibility, credibility and effectiveness of everyone.
I love the dinner/house analogy, Terri. Well said.
In addition to funding fears curtailing collaboration in our sector, I see information-hoarding as another bad phenomenon. I’m appalled by some funders, nonprofits and companies that serve our sector refusing to freely share what they know and learn.
They don’t get that scarcity mentalities lead to more scarcity.
I believe in giving away everything you can, in sharing information freely and in collaborating openly with others. While this sounds scary in a competitive world, it actually gets you more resources at the end of the day. When you’re generous with others, they usually end up reciprocating. You get absolutely amazing word of mouth and massive amounts of goodwill. When you join forces with worthy partners, you usually get more visibility and resources for both parties. When you act with integrity, you get more business. Really.
I’m not saying there isn’t competition in this world. I’m saying how we react to it is critical to our success. We can fight over the same small patches of territory or we can try to band together for a bigger land grab. The rare disease organizations have done this with great success with federal funding. Newspapers have done this to great success, making online content free - they then get more traffic and therefore more ad revenue. Network for Good does this too with our Learning Center and free calls - we share everything we know about fundraising. And we’ve ended up with more nonprofits using our services, which has led to more revenue.
Today at Network for Good’s Six Degrees site, we wrapped up our part of America’s Giving Challenge, a campaign by Parade and the Case Foundation. We saw amazing performances by our wired fundraisers, and though the results aren’t yet final we can say they were incredible - many individuals raised tens of thousands of dollars for their causes.
To celebrate their achievements, I want to share this week’s tips from Network for Good on this topic, authored by my talented colleague Rebecca Ruby. Here’s what she says:
If you’re sitting at your computer hugging your organization’s mission statement, branding guide and/or special event brochure (the one that was approved by everyone in your office, your board, your babysitter, etc. etc.), it’s time to take a deep breath-this idea might scare you.
It’s time to turn your message over to your constituents.
That’s right: let your fundraisers spread the word for you, outside of your direct reach. People are most likely to donate to a cause if asked by someone they know. Unless you personally know everyone in your town, city, state, country, etc., you need to call in the big guns: your wired fundraisers.
Wired fundraisers come in two varieties: passionate fundraisers who happen to use social networking (also known as Web 2.0) tools and people who use these tools who have turned into fundraisers. In order to take full advantage of social networking opportunities, you need to develop a plan to find your wired fundraisers (and capture their email addresses), empower them with your message and let them use their social networking tools to fly solo.
Here are a few steps to get you started:
Pick one social networking channel in which to get involved. Try Change.org, Facebook or MySpace. Or set up a blog. But most importantly, don’t try to tackle everything that’s out there. It’s better to have a strong presence in one network than to spread your organization too thin across Web 2.0.
Search for potential supporters. Search the Change.org network, Facebook Causes or MySpace pages for a nonprofit with a similar mission as yours. See who their “friends” are and invite them to your cause once you’re up and running. Here are some examples:
Make it easy for supporters to find you. As proactive as you’ll want to be in terms of reigning in new supporters, they’re going to look for you-make it easy for them to do so! Name your social networking page exactly as your organization is named. Again, have a strong presence in one channel rather than all of them. (Better a potential volunteer or donor can find your blog than miss your pages scattered across many networks.)
Build your house file. Once supporters of your cause have found you, make sure you give them a strong call to action to supply their email address to you so you can contact them later.
Encourage your new supporters to do your work for you (you know what I mean). Having Facebook friends isn’t enough. Now that you’ve started to cultivate relationships with these Internet superstars, empower them to share your charity with others: ask them to recruit friends to volunteer for you, create a charity badge and invite them to post it on their own blogs and social networking sites.
A great nonprofit leader I know recently saw a cool online quiz that he could appropropriate for his own work, and his reaction was “Great. I love piggy backing.”
It occured to me how rarely I hear this.
In our sector, we tend to focus on how little we have and how much more we need. But we would need less if we got more creative about piggy backing - for example, aligning with an issue or news already getting a lot of attention, or riding a demographic trend, or using (with permission, of course) great content developed by other entities. Not much money for audience research? Read other research - or as my buddy Craig LeFebvre says, look at campaigns directed at your audience that work. (Not just those in your issue area—but those that target your audience. The underlying values and messaging could be piggy back material.)
In other words, never build when you can borrow.
Before you start from scratch on anything, spend an hour seeing what’s already there, what can help you and what stands in your way. Act accordingly.
Here are some marketplace forces - aka potential piggies - to get you started:
1. Is there a demographic, lifestyle, social, health, natural or economic trend that we can ride? What trends might bring attention to our cause?
2. Are laws or regs in place that could help us succeed?
3. Is there research being released that is attracting publicity and bolsters our case?
4. What’s got the eye of the media? Can we play off that story?
5. What companies benefit if we succeed? Can we co-opt them?
6. Who else is talking about our issue and how could they help influence our audiences?
7. What content or material has already been developed that we can use?
An example of piggy backing in my book is the Five a Day campaign. That highly successful campaign to get us eating more fruits and veggies piggy backed onto the increasing number of people overwhelmed by their busy lifestyles by packaging fruits and veggies so they were more easy and convenient to consume - the original fast food.
Another example is Network for Good’s own Learning Center. We didn’t start from scratch in creating a site with original articles - we feature the work of the many smart writers and bloggers who’ve already written great material.
The lesson? Piggy backing often makes us more effective. It’s not about scrimping and stealing. It’s about riding on the back of what has already been built and has momentum in the marketplace.
1. We’re not our audience
Check that appeal/letter/message before you send it. Is it focused on you or your audience? The correct approach: focus on, respect and engage the audience first.
2. Our audience doesn’t think like us
Check how you make your organization/services/information accessible to people. Is it presented to match your org chart or the mindframe of your audience? Correct approach: you guessed it, the latter.
3. Our audience doesn’t take action without guidance
Check every communication with your audience. Does it make it clear what you’re asking them to do and why? Is your “ask” unmistakable? Make sure it is.
We’ve heard a lot from the presidential candidates about hope, change and the economy. That’s all important. But there’s another thing we need to hear. Let’s get them to talk about us. Our sector. Our causes. Our concerns. We’re all about hope and change and a better life, right?
Sound impossible? It’s not. All of us nonprofit folks, standing together, are a force to be reckoned with—bigger than any union or corporation or other entity grabbing headlines for its influence. There are 14 million nonprofits employees out there and 60 million volunteers. We generate billions in revenue and put billions more into county and state coffers through payroll taxes. So let’s get the candidates - and the next president - to take our sector—and ourselves and our issue—seriously. We can do it.
How?
Robert Egger, one of the great leaders in our sector and a wonderful friend and colleague, has been at this for quite some time. Robert is Founder and President of the DC Central Kitchen, the Co-Convener of the first Nonprofit Congress and, most recently, the Founder and Director of the Nonprofit Primary Project, which developed presidential candidate forums in New Hampshire. And today, he has created an easy way for this to happen in every election, national or local. V3 is his new website that shows how we can get all of this to happen. Check out V3, which he funded with money from his speaking engagements. It’s great to see such a beautiful piece of marketing for a such a great cause: us. (Full disclosure: In addition to knowing/admiring Robert and weighing in on the V3 site, I know and have in the past hired the creative folks behind the site design - I think their work is excellent.) Finally - an easy way for us to do something tangible to advance our cause and our sector as part of the political process. Robert got me very charged up about this effort when I saw him last week to discuss his message, and I hope he’ll get you charged up, too. (Read this.)
In Robert’s words, here’s what V3 does:
1. The V3 Campaign website – From the site, we will list EVERY election in America (mayor, state legislator, congress, senate, president), and provide links to each of the candidates, allowing any nonprofit employee to send a questionnaire that will ask three things: 1) Describe your personal or professional connection with a nonprofit. 2) How would you partner with nonprofits? 3) How would you strengthen the sector to be a good partner with you?
2. The V3 Site will record all written or recorded responses. If a candidate proposes a staff position, an office to work directly with nonprofits, or a bold new vision for managing community resources…BANG—it’s on V3 and other nonprofits can use it to challenge candidates in their community. If they do not respond, it’s on V3, and all of their constituents who work or volunteer with a nonprofit will know that they do not understand or value their work enough to suggest a detailed plan of action. Then, nonprofits and their supporters can vote according to their own personal convictions. Cause and effect—totally legal—only we drive the car.
I hope you’ll go onto V3 and sign up to ask any candidate what they’re doing to commit to working with nonprofits. In just a few minutes, you can feel you did something substantive to get seen and heard. If you care about your cause and want it to get noticed by your government, this is a great way to get started. Do it, and ask one other person to do it, too.
Posted by katya on Wed, February 27, 2008
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